The Rent movie is a horrible, horrible movie. It got stuck in that hell place between "changed and adapted too much" and "too close to the original material."
I love Rent, I'm a big huge fan of Rent, it changed my life, blah blah blah. But the movie sucked.
It felt to me like the cuts they made (the second half of Goodbye, Love being perhaps the most glaring in that "destroys the motivation for pretty much all of the events that happen afterwards" sense) were completely stupid, but there was also a lot of stuff they left in that could easily have been taken out, like, say, the original cast. It's sort of sad when I thought that some of the best moments in the film were given by the two newcomers (though Tracie does have that crazy eye thing going on).
But let's look at some of the really, really stupid things Chris Columbus did, shall we?
Someone mentioned the bit where they burned all of their songs and manuscripts and then threw it out the window. I'd like to further this by adding the following. Riding your bike while singing angrily doesn't work, and without the context of Benny backing out on their deal (given AFTER the song), all of the tenants saying "We're not gonna pay rent!" makes them sound like petulant children.
Taking out April's suicide made no sense to me, except in the sense that it PG-13izes something that really, really shouldn't have been neutered.
Another Day: Oh lordy. How about "Little girl hey, the door is that way" being sung from waaaaaaay up high in the balcony to someone who left your apartment 3 minutes ago? Or the crazy random camera action going between the two groups of people singing? Or hell, how about the fact that the apartment itself had way more stuff than I've ever had, and I'm not completely poor like they supposedly are.
I could go on, number by number, piece by piece, but why bother? There are select moments of the movie that I enjoy (Out Tonight I felt was actually quite well done) but the truth of the matter is that the movie is straight up terrible. Is it okay to like a terrible movie? Sure. I like a lot of terrible movies. But don't claim that it's "Actually quite good in parts and people are just angry that parts got changed" because it's not and that's not why people don't like it. I would have preferred MORE change.
I read the original screenplay by Stephen Chbosky from 2001, which, while it had some glaring errors (especially near the end), also had some serious balls to it in terms of changing things around and adapting the story. Dreamgirls and Chicago both changed stuff around all the time, and nobody complained because they did it in an effective, meaningful way (albeit far more effectively in Chicago's case).
Oh, and one last thing. I love Adam Pascal and I always will but he's too old to have an EXTREEEEEEEEEEEME closeup for 90% of "Your eyes", especially on the big screen.
Updated On: 12/3/07 at 03:45 PM